THUNDER BAY – The holiday travel season is in full swing, with countless individuals looking forward to travelling back home to reunite with their loved ones and friends.
According to the Thunder Bay Airport, these are the busiest travel days of the season, with thousands of passengers arriving and departing from the airport.
Despite a few cancellations and delays on the Flight Information board earlier this morning, most scheduled flights have successfully taken off and landed on time.
Airport CEO Ed Schmidtke said that the airport has made necessary arrangements to manage the increased traffic during the Christmas weekend. However, he advises passengers to arrive early to ensure smooth and hassle-free travel.
“There could be some weather-related safety delays for de-icing and that sort of thing. We encourage people to stay in touch with their airline’s flight status, check our website for flight status,” he said.
“Things are looking very good. Most of our flights so far today are early. Here's hoping. Fingers crossed for the rest of the season, but stay in touch so you're not surprised.”
Some travellers were taking that advice to heart, like one traveller who said that he prefers the calm experience of arriving early.
“I'm a little early. My flight's at noon, but I like to take my time and have something to eat. And yeah, we got a nice airport here. It's really nice,” he said.
“Beats Toronto Airport for the amount of people, right? Yeah. So it's nice here in Thunder Bay.”
The airport is expecting to see large numbers again starting around Dec. 29, and travellers are advised to plan accordingly at that time as well.
